“I guess you could ask people to make recommendations on LinkedIn,” said Scott. Scott and I both work in information technology. “ 'Working with Cynthia was an amazing experience as she always made deadlines and was incredibly prepared for meetings and she is as good as her word when it comes to not dropping a deuce on your floor.'” Marvellous writing, as ever, from Paul Ford.

"I’d really like more week-long exercises in fiction delivered to me via Twitter. The problem with other accounts for fictional characters – including, say, The West Wing’s Joshua Lyman and Donna Moss – is that they’re continuous, shapeless roleplay. I want a planned narrative that ends."

"It has been interesting to watch the rise of the subsequent discourse on gamification, because to me, the focus on "achievements" and such misses the real power of games: they teach us dynamic system models. The instruments we build at Bloom will each provide a different "physics of information," or game-like rule set that maps the variables from the data the user is viewing (how many followers does my friend have) into a set of rules that govern the behavior and presentation of the data (how big is the dot that represents that friend). Once users learn how these rules work, they can perform the system like they might perform a video game, zooming through structures, using tools, and interacting with the environment. Play is the way humans learn how new environments work. We'll let people play in countless environments built by their own network data and resources." Dingdingding!